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The war resulted in the 1858 Treaty of Tientsin (Tianjin), in which the Chinese government agreed to pay war reparations for the expenses of the recent conflict, open a second group of ten ports to European commerce, legalize the opium trade, and grant foreign traders and missionaries rights to travel within China.
Historical accounts suggest that opium first arrived in China during the Tang dynasty (618–907) as part of the merchandise of Arab traders. [10] Later on, Song Dynasty (960–1279) poet and pharmacologist Su Dongpo recorded the use of opium as a medicinal herb: "Daoists often persuade you to drink the jisu water, but even a child can prepare the yingsu soup."
Gladstone was fiercely against both of the Opium Wars, was ardently opposed to the British trade in opium to China, and denounced British violence against Chinese. [49] Gladstone lambasted it as "Palmerston's Opium War" and said that he felt "in dread of the judgments of God upon England for our national iniquity towards China" in May 1840. [50]
The interpretation of the war, which was long the standard in the People's Republic of China, was summarised in 1976: The Opium War, "in which the Chinese people fought against British aggression, marked the beginning of modern Chinese history and the start of the Chinese people's bourgeois-democratic revolution against imperialism and feudalism."
Western and Japanese trade in opium to China (1800s–1940s) Defeat in the First Opium War (1839–1842) by the British and the occupation of Hong Kong. The unequal treaties (in particular, Nanjing, Whampoa, Aigun, and Shimonoseki) Defeat in the Second Opium War (1856–1860) and the sacking and looting of the Old Summer Palace by Anglo-French ...
Several wars would lead to the creation of colonial concessions taken from Qing China. These included the First Opium War (1839–1842), Second Opium War (1856–1860), Sino-French War (1884–1885), First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), and Russian invasion of Manchuria (1900). [18]
In 1839, China found itself fighting the First Opium War with Britain. China was defeated, and in 1842, signed the provisions of the Treaty of Nanking which were first of the unequal treaties signed during the Qing dynasty.
After the First Opium War in 1840 China was in a shaky situation due to onerous conditions of the ratified peace treaty and inner sociopolitical conflict within the nation: the weakening of the power of the Manchu emperors led to an open Taiping Rebellion and, most importantly, formation of the Taiping State, with which the government fought for many years ever since. [2]